The penultimate meditation by P. Radcliffe deals with authority. In order not to disrupt the train of thought in the text, we keep the term "authority" in our working translation even where we are more accustomed to translate it as "power" (for example, in citations from the Holy Scriptures).
Our conversation cannot be fruitful unless we acknowledge that each of us speaks with authority. We are all baptized in Christ: priest, prophet, and king. When the International Theological Commission engages with the notion of sensus fidei, it cites St. John: "But you have received an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth," "the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you" (1 John 2:20, 27; Jerusalem translation).
Many laypeople were astonished during the synod preparation to find someone listening to them, most likely for the first time. They questioned their own authority and asked, "Do I really have something to offer?" (B.2.53). But it is not only laypeople who lack authority. The entire Church is affected by a crisis of authority. One Asian bishop lamented that he has no authority. He said, "The priests are totally independent bosses who do not consider me at all." Many priests also say they have lost all authority. We have been discredited by scandals of sexual abuse.
The whole world suffers from a crisis of authority. All institutions have lost it. The political scene, the law, the press—all feel the decline of authority. It seems that authority belongs always to others: either to dictators who come to power in many places or to new media, celebrities, and influencers. The world hungers for voices that speak with authority about the meaning of our lives. There is a risk that this vacuum will be filled with dangerous voices. Our world is not governed by authority, but by mercantile relationships—even in families, at universities, and in the Church.
How could the Church regain the lost authority and address our world, which hungers for a true voice? Luke narrates that when Jesus taught, "they were amazed at his teaching, because he spoke with authority" (Luke 4:32). He commands unclean spirits, and they obey him. Likewise, the wind and the sea. He even has the authority to call his dead friend back to life: "Lazarus, come out!" (John 11:43). And at the end of Matthew's Gospel, the words ring out: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matthew 28:18).
About halfway through the Synoptic Gospels, at Caesarea Philippi, there is a massive crisis of authority. Compared to it, our current crises are insignificant. Jesus informs his closest friends that he must go to Jerusalem, where he will suffer, be killed, and rise from the dead. And they do not accept it. Therefore, Jesus takes them with him up the mountain and is transfigured before them.
His authority is revealed in his glory, in the testimony of Moses and Elijah. It is an authority that touches their ears and eyes, their hearts and minds, their imaginations. Finally, they now listen to him.
Peter is filled with joy: "It is good that we are here!" (Mark 9:5). He expressed this famous sentence, which Teilhard de Chardin /1881–1955/ once said: "Joy is the unmistakable sign of God's presence." This is the joy Sister Maria Ignazia spoke of this morning. Mary's joy. Without joy, none of us has any authority. No one believes a grumpy Christian! In the event of the Transfiguration, joy flows from three sources: from beauty, goodness, and truth. We could also mention other forms of authority. The Instrumentum laboris emphasizes the authority of the poor, there is also the authority of tradition and the authority of hierarchy with its service to unity.
This morning, I would like to point out that authority is manifold and mutually reinforcing. It is not a competition, as if laypeople could have more authority only by taking it away from bishops, or as if so-called conservatives are competing for authority with progressives. We might be tempted to call down fire on those we consider our opponents, like the disciples in today's Gospel (Luke 9:51-56). But in the Trinity, there is no rivalry. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit do not compete for power. Nor is there any competitiveness among the four Gospels...
We will speak to our bewildered world with authority if at the synod we transcend competitive ways of existence. Then the world will recognize the voice of the shepherd who calls us to life. Let us return again to the scene of the Transfiguration on the mountain and observe the interplay of different forms of authority.
Beauty
First, there is beauty, glory. In Hebrew, these are practically synonyms. Bishop Robert Barron /*1959/ once said (and forgive me, Father Bishop Bob, if I misquote you) that beauty can touch a person who rejects other forms of authority. Because a moral viewpoint can be perceived as moralistic: "By what right do you want to speak into my life?" Doctrinal authority can be dismissed as oppressive: "How dare you tell me what to think?" But beauty has an authority that touches the deep intimacy of our freedom.
Beauty opens our imagination to the transcendent, the homeland we long for. The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins /1844–1889/ calls God "beauty itself and the giver of beauty." (1) And Thomas Aquinas says that beauty reveals the ultimate goal of our life journey, much like a target to which an archer aims.
It is no wonder that Peter does not know what to say. Beauty transports us beyond words. It is said that every adolescent has some experience of transcendent beauty. However, if they have no guide, as the disciples had in the figures of Moses and Elijah, they might easily miss that moment. When I was sixteen and attending a Benedictine school, I experienced such a moment in a great abbey church. I had wise monks nearby who helped me to understand.
Not all beauty, however, speaks of God. Nazi leaders favored classical music. On the feast of the Transfiguration, the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima—in a horrific parody of divine light. Beauty can deceive and allure. Jesus said, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean" (Matthew 23:27).
The divine beauty that revealed itself on the mountain will shine behind the walls of the holy city when the Lord’s glory is revealed on the cross. God’s beauty reveals itself most brilliantly in what seems the most hideous. If we want to glimpse God’s beauty, we must venture to places of suffering.
Etty Hillesum /1914–1943/, a Jewish mystic drawn to Christianity, found beauty even in a Nazi concentration camp: "I want to be here, in the environment permeated by what people call 'absolute horror', and yet be able to confess that life is beautiful." (3) Every renewal of the Church has gone hand in hand with aesthetic revival: Orthodox iconography, Gregorian chant, Counter-Reformation Baroque (which I personally do not like!). The Reformation was partly a clash of aesthetic visions. What kind of aesthetic renewal do we need today to open ourselves to a ray of transcendence, especially concerning places filled with despondency and suffering? How can we communicate the beauty of the cross to others?
When the Dominicans arrived in Guatemala in the 16th century, it was precisely beauty that allowed them to connect with the indigenous people and offer them the gospel. The brothers then refused the protection of Spanish conquistadors. They taught the native merchants Christian songs to sing as they traveled through the mountains selling their goods. And these songs opened the way for the brothers, who could then safely enter the area still known as Verapaz—True Peace. In the end, however, soldiers came and killed not only the indigenous people but also the brothers who were trying to protect them.
What songs can penetrate the world of the young? Who are their musicians and poets? Beauty sets our imagination in motion so that we glimpse the end of our journey. However, we, like Peter, might be tempted to stay. In order to descend from the mountain for the first synod, to embark on the journey to Jerusalem, we need other ways of authority that will move our imagination. The disciples receive two interpreters of what they see—Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets... or Goodness/Sanctity and Truth.
Goodness/Sanctity
Moses led Israel from slavery to freedom. The Israelites did not want to go; they longed for the security of Egypt. They feared freedom in the desert, just as the disciples were afraid to set off for Jerusalem. In Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (1880), the Grand Inquisitor asserts that "for humanity and society, nothing has ever been as unbearable as freedom... In the end, they will lay their freedom at our feet and say: Feel free to enslave us, but give us bread."
Authority of the saints springs from courage. They encourage us to embark on the journey. They invite us to join them in the risky adventure of holiness. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was born into an Orthodox Jewish family and became an atheist in her adolescence. However, when she accidentally picked up the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, she read it the whole night. She recounts: "When I finished, I said to myself: This is the truth." This truth led her to death in Auschwitz. That is the authority of holiness. It invites us to relinquish control over our lives and to let God be God.
Perhaps the most popular book of the 20th century was Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (written intermittently between 1937 and 1949). It is a deeply Catholic novel. Tolkien said it is an eucharistic romance. The first authorities in the church were martyrs, because they boldly relinquished everything. G. K. Chesterton /1874–1936/ wrote that "courage is almost a contradiction. It means a strong desire for life that assumes the willingness to die." (4) And us? Are we afraid to expose ourselves to dangerous challenges of faith? Herbert McCabe OP /1926–2001/ said: "When you love, you expose yourself to injury, possibly even to death. But if you do not love, you are already dead." Young people will not be attracted to our faith if it is tentatively cautious.
"Perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18). Former General of the Franciscans, Brother Michael Anthony Perry OFM /*1954/, said: "In baptism, we renounced the right to fear." (5) I would rather say that we have given up the right to be enslaved by fear. A brave person knows fear. In our fearful world, we will have authority only when it is clear that we risk everything. When our European brothers set out to proclaim the gospel in Asia four hundred years ago, half of them died before reaching their destination, whether due to illness, shipwreck, or pirates. Should we have their reckless courage?
Henri Burin de Roziers /1930–2017/ was a French Dominican who worked as a lawyer in the Brazilian Amazon. He tried to bring before the court the large landowners who often enslaved the poor, forcing them to work on their vast estates and killing them whenever they attempted to escape. Henri was threatened with death countless times. He was offered police protection, but he knew he would likely be killed by someone among the assigned guards. When I visited him, he offered me his room for the night. The next day he told me that he hadn’t closed his eyes; what if they came for him and accidentally got me?
Therefore, the authority of beauty speaks of the end of the journey, of the homeland we have not yet seen. The authority of holiness speaks of the path taken to get there. It is the authority of those who do not cling to life. The Irish poet Pádraig Pearse /1879–1916/ confessed: "I wasted the beautiful years that God granted my youth trying to do impossible things, believing that only they were worth the effort. Lord, if I had those years again, I would waste them again—I cast them aside." (6)
Truth
And then there is Elijah. The prophets are heralds of truth. Elijah saw through the dreams of the prophets of Baal and heard the voice of the still small voice on the mountain. Veritas—Truth, the motto of the Dominican Order. This attracted me to the Dominicans even before I ever met any of them; perhaps it was Providence.
Our world has abandoned love for the truth: fake news, wild claims on the internet, twisted conspiracy theories. Yet there exists in humanity an ineradicable sense of truth, and when the truth is spoken, it still carries some residue of authority. The Instrumentum laboris does not hesitate to accurately name the challenges we face. It openly speaks of the hopes and sorrows, the anger and joys of God's people. How can we attract anyone to Him, who is the Truth, when we are not truthful about ourselves?
Allow me to mention two aspects in which prophetic tradition speaking the truth is necessary. First, we need to speak truthfully about the joys and sufferings of the world. On the island of Hispaniola, in Advent 1511, the Dominican Antonio de Montesinos /1475–1540/ delivered a famous sermon against the slavery inflicted by the conquistadors on the indigenous population. "Tell me, by what right or by what interpretation of justice do you hold the Indians in such cruel and horrible slavery? By what authority do you wage a dreadful war against people who previously lived so quietly and peacefully in their own land?" This sermon was heard by Antonio's fellow brother Bartolomé de las Casas /1484–1566/, who until then had led a very average life, and he repented. At the synod, we will listen to those who will speak truthfully of the "joys and hopes, sorrows and anxieties of the people of our time" (Gaudium et Spes 1).
Secondly, we also need disciplined scientific research regarding the truth, which will resist our temptation to misuse the Word of God and the teachings of the Church for our own purposes, in the manner of: "God must be right because He agrees with me!" Biblical scholars take us back to the original texts in all their strangeness and otherness. (When I was in the hospital, my caregiver told me that he wishes to master Latin sufficient to read the Scriptures in the original. I did not say anything in response.) True scholars stand against any simplifying attempts to use Scripture, the teachings of the Church, or tradition for personal squabbles. God's word belongs to God! Listen to Him! We do not own the truth. The truth owns us.
Every love opens us to the truth of other people. We discover how they remain, in a certain sense, unknowable. We cannot seize them and use them for our own purposes. We love them in their otherness, in their uncontrollable freedom.
On the mountain of Transfiguration, we see that various forms of authority are there to carry the disciples through the great crisis of authority at Caesarea Philippi. All these forms, as well as others, are necessary. Without truth, beauty would remain soulless. Someone once said, "Beauty relates to truth in the same way that deliciousness relates to food." Beauty without goodness easily deceives. Goodness without truth slips into sentimentality. Truth without goodness leads to inquisition. St. John Henry Newman /1801–1890/ beautifully captured the many forms of authority—government, reason, and experience.
Each of us has authority, but it is different. Newman wrote that when the authority of governance becomes absolute, it will be tyrannical. If reason were to be the only authority, we would fall into dry rationalism. If religious experience were the only authority, superstition would prevail. The synod resembles an orchestra in which each instrument plays its own part. Thus, the Jesuit tradition of discernment is so fruitful. Just as an orchestra or a football team does not operate by voting, we do not arrive at the truth simply by majority votes.
Authority of leadership ensures that conversation in the Church will be fruitful, that no voice will dominate and overwhelm the others, that it will recognize hidden harmony. Jonathan Sacks /1948–2020/, the former Chief Rabbi of England, wrote: "In turbulent times, religious leaders are easily tempted to confrontationalism. It is not only necessary to proclaim the truth, but also to publicly condemn the lie. Both must be relentlessly separated. To fail to condemn the lie is to approve it." However, he adds, "the prophet hears not one command but two: to lead, and to empathize; to love the truth, and yet remain in solidarity with those who stumble. Upholding tradition while simultaneously defending those who reject it is a difficult, but unavoidable task of religious leadership in a non-religious age" (7).
All power comes from our Triune God, from the One in whom all is shared. The Italian theologian Leonardo Paris /*1977/ advocates the idea that "the Father shares his power. With everyone. And configures all power as shared... It is no longer possible to quote Paul ("there is no longer Jew or Gentile, nor slave or free, nor is there male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28)) and invoke synodality without recognizing that it also means finding concrete historical forms so that each person can be appreciated as one who has the power that the Father wanted to entrust to him" (8).
If the Church truly becomes a community in which we mutually recognize our power, we will speak with the authority of the Lord. The transformation into such a Church will be painful and beautiful at the same time. We will speak about this next time.
[1] ‘The Golden Echo’
[2] ST III. 45
[3] An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941–43, Persephone Books, London, 2007, p. 276
[4] Orthodoxy, London 1996, p. 134
[5] Benotti, p. 66
[6] Quoted by Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, 'Fiftieth Anniversary of Priesthood', in Daniel P. Cronin, Priesthood: A Life Open to Christ (St Pauls Publishing, London 2009, p. 134)
[7] ‘Elijah and the Still, Small Voice’, www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/pinchas/elijah-and-the-still-small-voice
[8] Leonardo Paris, L’erede. Una cristologia, Queriniana, 2021, pp. 220-221. Soon to be published in English by Brill, with a Foreword by Massimo Faggioli.
